For me Buddha is that which awakens to the present moment, not some guy who died 2500 agoSo faith in the Buddha is faith in the present moment and true refuge is found in the present moment, not a bunch of aggregates that died 2500 years ago

Ajahn Chah may have taught something like this, but he was not a heretic. I have always sensed that he had the wisdom of an Arahant that allowed him to say and do provocative things. These were teaching moments.

It's a slippery slope for the rest of us to fail to venerate the life and teaching of the Buddha. Once you have decided that the Buddha's Dhamma is no longer necessary, you are free to reject almost anything. One can easily slide into the secular materialism that is gripping the Buddhist west today. The Buddha becomes an artifact the same way that Newton becomes irrelevant when you fall drunk out of bed, you believe you've discovered gravity.

It's a slippery slope for the rest of us to fail to venerate the life and teaching of the Buddha. Once you have decided that the Buddha's Dhamma is no longer necessary, you are free to reject almost anything. One can easily slide into the secular materialism that is gripping the Buddhist west today. The Buddha becomes an artifact the same way that Newton becomes irrelevant when you fall drunk out of bed, you believe you've discovered gravity.

Whos saying that Buddha Dhamma is no longer necessary?

I am grateful to the man who discovered Dhamma, I just see the Buddha as awareness in the here and now (and that as a refuge), not a man who died in India

He who binds to himself a joyDoes the wingèd life destroy;But he who kisses the joy as it fliesLives in eternity's sunrise.

What I was trying to express is the idea that to study and venerate the Dhamma includes the study and veneration of the Buddha. It is his Dhamma that was unique, transformative, and revolutionary with respect to the Brahmanic culture in which he lived. So, this sense of Dhamma, for me, very much includes the words, attitudes and admonitions of this one man.

Further, to be focused singularly on the "Buddha that is the present moment" sounds to me a more Mahayana idea. We do know that so much of the Mahayana was created well past the Buddha's time, from schools literally creating a new brand out of whole cloth, and I'm guessing that a lot of what passes for Mahayana Buddhism these days would be unrecognizable to Gauatama and his disciples.

If we meet the Buddha we are to kill the Buddha. But not literally. My prostrations are, in part, veneration of this man and what he developed in the face of so much opposition.

What I was trying to express is the idea that to study and venerate the Dhamma includes the study and veneration of the Buddha. It is his Dhamma that was unique, transformative, and revolutionary with respect to the Brahmanic culture in which he lived. So, this sense of Dhamma, for me, very much includes the words, attitudes and admonitions of this one man.

Further, to be focused singularly on the "Buddha that is the present moment" sounds to me a more Mahayana idea. We do know that so much of the Mahayana was created well past the Buddha's time, from schools literally creating a new brand out of whole cloth, and I'm guessing that a lot of what passes for Mahayana Buddhism these days would be unrecognizable to Gauatama and his disciples.

If we meet the Buddha we are to kill the Buddha. But not literally. My prostrations are, in part, veneration of this man and what he developed in the face of so much opposition.

Thank you, BuddhaSoup! Couldn't have said it any better...

*hands in Anjali* "Homage to the BuddhaThus indeed, is that Blessed One: He is the Holy One, fully enlightened, endowed with clear vision and virtuous conduct, sublime, the Knower of the worlds, the incomparable leader of men to be tamed, the teacher of gods and men, enlightened and blessed."

"Homage to the Teachings The Dhamma of the Blessed One is perfectly expounded; to be seen here and how; not delayed in time; inviting one to come and see; onward leading (to Nibbana); to be known by the wise, each for himself."

"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "--------------------------------------------"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One, Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation, Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "

What I was trying to express is the idea that to study and venerate the Dhamma includes the study and veneration of the Buddha. It is his Dhamma that was unique, transformative, and revolutionary with respect to the Brahmanic culture in which he lived. So, this sense of Dhamma, for me, very much includes the words, attitudes and admonitions of this one man.

Further, to be focused singularly on the "Buddha that is the present moment" sounds to me a more Mahayana idea. We do know that so much of the Mahayana was created well past the Buddha's time, from schools literally creating a new brand out of whole cloth, and I'm guessing that a lot of what passes for Mahayana Buddhism these days would be unrecognizable to Gauatama and his disciples.

If we meet the Buddha we are to kill the Buddha. But not literally. My prostrations are, in part, veneration of this man and what he developed in the face of so much opposition.

That's an interesting idea that seems to be in common currency in some quarters but if you read scholars like Paul Williams' Mahayana Buddhism, the evidence seems to indicate that what came to be known as Mahayana was, at least initially, an attempt to return to what these monks saw as the pure Dhamma, the Dhamma aimed at liberation, perhaps as a reaction to Abhidhamma, perhaps more as a reaction to the lax attitudes that came to pervade many communities at that time.

In actual fact whenever people try to broadbrush Mahayana as some sort of a departure from what the Buddha taught, I think they ought to study what they are talking about first a little more. If one studies Nagarjuna, for example, one of the seminal Mahayana teachers, one can see how deeply his teachings align with what we see in the Pali Canon and actually come from a deep respect and care for the Canon.

At present, the Buddha, the real Buddha, is still living, for He is the Dhamma itself, the "Sacca-Dhamma." And "Sacca-Dhamma," that which enables one to become Buddha, still exists. It hasn't fled anywhere! It gives rise to two Buddhas: one in body and the other in mind.

AND

The Dhamma that the Buddha realized is the Dhamma which exists permanently in the world. It can be compared to ground water which permanently exists in the ground. When a person wishes to dig a well, he must dig down deep enough to reach the ground water. The ground water is already there. He does not create the water, he just discovers it.

Similarly, the Buddha did not invent the Dhamma, did not decree the Dhamma. He merely revealed what was already there. Through contemplation, the Buddha saw the Dhamma. Therefore, it is said that the Buddha was Enlightened, for Enlightenment is knowing the Dhamma. The Dhamma is the Truth of this world. Seeing this, Siddhartha Gotama is called "The Buddha." And the Dhamma is that which allows other people to become a Buddha, "One-who-knows," one who knows Dhamma.

clw_uk wrote:For me Buddha is that which awakens to the present moment, not some guy who died 2500 ago

So faith in the Buddha is faith in the present moment and true refuge is found in the present moment, not a bunch of aggregates that died 2500 years ago

clw_uk wrote:I am grateful to the man who discovered Dhamma, I just see the Buddha as awareness in the here and now (and that as a refuge), not a man who died in India

I guess I have a different idea of what the Buddha was and what the Buddha did. I would never use such flippant language to describe him - not out of blind respect, but out of the knowledge and appreciation for what he went through and what he became. “Some guy?” I reserve “some guy” for common people. I am not surprised at all that you would ask such a question considering how you regard the Buddha. I have no answer to the OP.

clw_uk wrote:For me Buddha is that which awakens to the present moment, not some guy who died 2500 ago

So faith in the Buddha is faith in the present moment and true refuge is found in the present moment, not a bunch of aggregates that died 2500 years ago

clw_uk wrote:I am grateful to the man who discovered Dhamma, I just see the Buddha as awareness in the here and now (and that as a refuge), not a man who died in India

I guess I have a different idea of what the Buddha was and what the Buddha did. I would never use such flippant language to describe him - not out of blind respect, but out of the knowledge and appreciation for what he went through and what he became. “Some guy?” I reserve “some guy” for common people. I am not surprised at all that you would ask such a question considering how you regard the Buddha. I have no answer to the OP.

What I was trying to express is the idea that to study and venerate the Dhamma includes the study and veneration of the Buddha. It is his Dhamma that was unique, transformative, and revolutionary with respect to the Brahmanic culture in which he lived. So, this sense of Dhamma, for me, very much includes the words, attitudes and admonitions of this one man.

If that works for you

Further, to be focused singularly on the "Buddha that is the present moment" sounds to me a more Mahayana idea. We do know that so much of the Mahayana was created well past the Buddha's time, from schools literally creating a new brand out of whole cloth, and I'm guessing that a lot of what passes for Mahayana Buddhism these days would be unrecognizable to Gauatama and his disciples.

Its there in Theravada as well

BUDDHA

The first example is the word "Buddha." As you know, the word "Buddha" in everyday language refers to the historical Enlightened Being, Gotama Buddha. It refers to a physical man of flesh and bone who was born in India over two thousand years ago, died, and was cremated. This is the meaning of the word "Buddha" in everyday language.

Considered in terms of Dhamma lanugage, however, the word "Buddha" refers to the Truth which the historical Buddha realized and taught, namely the Dhamma itself.

We can use the word Buddha to refer to Gotama, the founder of what is now known as Buddhism, the historical sage who attained Parinibbana in India 2,500 years ago, the teacher of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, teachings from which we still benefit today. But when we take refuge in the Buddha, it doesn’t mean that we take refuge in some historical prophet, but in that which is wise in the universe, in our minds, that which is not separate from us but is more real than anything we can conceive with the mind or experience through the senses. Without any Buddha-wisdom in the universe, life for any length of time would be totally impossible; it is the Buddha-wisdom that protects. We call it Buddha-wisdom, other people can call it other things if they want, these are just words. We happen to use the words of our tradition. We’re not going to argue about Pali words, Sanskrit words, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English or any other, we’re just using the term Buddha-wisdom as a conventional symbol to help remind us to be wise, to be alert, to be awake.

Dan74 wrote:That's an interesting idea that seems to be in common currency in some quarters but if you read scholars like Paul Williams' Mahayana Buddhism, the evidence seems to indicate that what came to be known as Mahayana was, at least initially, an attempt to return to what these monks saw as the pure Dhamma, the Dhamma aimed at liberation, perhaps as a reaction to Abhidhamma, perhaps more as a reaction to the lax attitudes that came to pervade many communities at that time.

In actual fact whenever people try to broadbrush Mahayana as some sort of a departure from what the Buddha taught, I think they ought to study what they are talking about first a little more. If one studies Nagarjuna, for example, one of the seminal Mahayana teachers, one can see how deeply his teachings align with what we see in the Pali Canon and actually come from a deep respect and care for the Canon.

Dan, I agree with you. I wasn't as careful as I should have been with my words. My limited understanding from the early schisms in the Sangha is the idea that there was a split over Vinaya, and other issues related to Vinaya rules. The early sangha that later evolved to call itself Mahayana may have been part of this early school of traditionalists. Monks from both schools lived and practiced together.....what later Mahayana calls "Hinayana" died out in India (it is not Theravada). When I use the concept "Mahayana" I mean in the usage of the later schools that developed once the Dhamma left India for China and, especially, Japan. I have enormous respect for the Mahayana schools that revere and teach the Agamas. At least an effort is made to preserve and disseminate the original teachings, as well as we know them from the Tipitaka/Tripitaka.

My concern is what happened to the Canon, as it passed through Asia, over time. Kinda like what Ven. Thanissaro speaks of with his "game of telephone" analogy. By the time the dharma hit the modern west, it seems to be largely unrecognizable re the Canon. The misuse of the Kalama Sutta (just do whatever your gut tells you is right""??) is just one small example of the way that Dhamma has been lost, and replaced by a dharma that would be unrecognizable by the 1st and 2nd Council. Nevermind the body of sutras that claim to be Buddhavacana that were written by Chinese monks in 400 CE and later.

This is just my explanation for rejecting, in part, this idea that the Dhamma is what we find in the present moment. The Dhamma I'm searching for and trying to absorb was spoken 2600 years ago.

Last edited by Anagarika on Wed Jul 10, 2013 5:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hi friends,In MN 47, the Vimamsaka Sutta, the Buddha invites examination. Coupled with the notorious Kalama Sutta, we have precedent for the so-called "charter of free inquiry" (I borrow from Ven. Analayo, but am not sure if the phrase is original to him). Yet, as Bhikkhu Bodhi reminds us (commenting on the Kalama Sutta), Right View must be one's basis for such inquiry:

The discourse to the Kalamas offers an acid test for gaining confidence in the Dhamma as a viable doctrine of deliverance. We begin with an immediately verifiable teaching whose validity can be attested by anyone with the moral integrity to follow it through to its conclusions, namely, that the defilements cause harm and suffering both personal and social, that their removal brings peace and happiness, and that the practices taught by the Buddha are effective means for achieving their removal. By putting this teaching to a personal test, with only a provisional trust in the Buddha as one's collateral, one eventually arrives at a firmer, experientially grounded confidence in the liberating and purifying power of the Dhamma. This increased confidence in the teaching brings along a deepened faith in the Buddha as teacher, and thus disposes one to accept on trust those principles he enunciates that are relevant to the quest for awakening, even when they lie beyond one's own capacity for verification. This, in fact, marks the acquisition of right view, in its preliminary role as the forerunner of the entire Noble Eightfold Path.

clw_uk wrote:Why do Buddhists, at least on internet discussion forums, always revert back to the first Arahant in india (siddhartha gautama) instead of referring to modern day arahants?

IMO we can take the core teachings from siddhartha and gain better elaborations from modern ajahans (such as Ajahn Chah, Ajahn Sumedho and Ajhan Buddhadasa) since they communicate via our modern languages and use our modern terms and concepts

I spent the first half of my Buddhist years getting my dhamma from those who wanted to share it -- mostly via books (this being prior to the days of the internet). What I discovered was that there were lots of varying opinions about what the Buddha taught. How would I know which was accurate? I tried the method of applying the techniques explained in the books, and got some distance down the road, but not far; I really could not understand what all the teachers were trying to show me.

The answer, for me, in straightening it out, has been to go back and learn from the master himself. It's a daunting task -- lots of texts, very different style of speaking. So I take your point, clw, that learning what it's about from someone who speaks the same tongue we do could be a very good thing. But my personal experience has been that, until I understood how the Buddha was framing his arguments -- what he was arguing against, and why he used the language he did the way he did -- I was not going to be able to sort out which modern teachers were making sense and which were not.

My personal experience has been that at Amaravati Monastery in the UK, I have found that teachers such as Ajahn Sumedho and Ajahn Amaro have given sutta references both in their talks and in the question and answer sessions afterwards.

This has been very helpful for me, because I can then refer to the suttas afterwards.

I'm not a Pali scholar however - and to be honest, regular meditation is becoming more important than a lot of studying, in connection with my daily life.

After being a Vajrayana practitioner for a long time, I feel much more connected to the western Theravada Thai Forest Tradition now and I think I've benefited from their teachings, so I wouldn't want to give that up.

So to conclude, I'm definately not setting aside the teachings of the Buddha in the suttas, but I'm acknowledging that modern teachers who have had many years of study and practice and who have dedicated their lives to Buddha,Dhamma, Sangha, can help me to better understand them.

danieLion wrote:Hi friends,In MN 47, the Vimamsaka Sutta, the Buddha invites examination. Coupled with the notorious Kalama Sutta, we have precedent for the so-called "charter of free inquiry" (I borrow from Ven. Analayo, but am not sure if the phrase is original to him). Yet, as Bhikkhu Bodhi reminds us (commenting on the Kalama Sutta), Right View must be one's basis for such inquiry:

The discourse to the Kalamas offers an acid test for gaining confidence in the Dhamma as a viable doctrine of deliverance. We begin with an immediately verifiable teaching whose validity can be attested by anyone with the moral integrity to follow it through to its conclusions, namely, that the defilements cause harm and suffering both personal and social, that their removal brings peace and happiness, and that the practices taught by the Buddha are effective means for achieving their removal. By putting this teaching to a personal test, with only a provisional trust in the Buddha as one's collateral, one eventually arrives at a firmer, experientially grounded confidence in the liberating and purifying power of the Dhamma. This increased confidence in the teaching brings along a deepened faith in the Buddha as teacher, and thus disposes one to accept on trust those principles he enunciates that are relevant to the quest for awakening, even when they lie beyond one's own capacity for verification. This, in fact, marks the acquisition of right view, in its preliminary role as the forerunner of the entire Noble Eightfold Path.

Kindly,dL

Pretty much sums up exactly how I feel when the Kalama sutta is dragged out by secularists as a blank cheque for being skeptical of whatever aspects of the Dhamma offends their views. I'm also forever harping on about how in order to make progress in the Dhamma beyond a certain point, we must abandon this idea that our views have primacy. We must abandon the idea that our views are correct, because we're deluded and ignorant. To assume one's views are on an equal platform with that of the Buddha is like a blind man attesting that he can see just as well as a man with sight. We blind people should take the man with sight as our guide.

Imagine you're on fire, and a man comes up with a bucket of water and says - here, quickly, let me pour this water on you and you say: 'Well, does it really work? How do you know it's going to work? Where did you get that water from? Where did you buy that bucket? Is it a good bucket?" - That's how I see people with too much skepticism. A bit is fine, a bit is healthy, especially when you're new to Buddhism. But when you're chopping and changing parts of the Buddha's teachings, and you don't believe he said X or Y because of some revisionist history, then I think you're more interested in the origin of the bucket than in putting out the fire.

& mettaJack

"For a disciple who has conviction in the Teacher's message & lives to penetrate it, what accords with the Dhamma is this:'The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple. He is the one who knows, not I." - MN. 70 Kitagiri Sutta

BlackBird wrote:... We blind people should take the man with sight as our guide.

Imagine you're on fire, and a man comes up with a bucket of water and says - here, quickly, let me pour this water on you and you say: 'Well, does it really work? How do you know it's going to work? Where did you get that water from? Where did you buy that bucket? Is it a good bucket?" - That's how I see people with too much skepticism. A bit is fine, a bit is healthy, especially when you're new to Buddhism. But when you're chopping and changing parts of the Buddha's teachings, and you don't believe he said X or Y because of some revisionist history, then I think you're more interested in the origin of the bucket than in putting out the fire.

& mettaJack

To revert back to Siddhartha Gautama ...

"It's just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a brahman, a merchant, or a worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me... until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short... until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored... until I know his home village, town, or city... until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow... until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated... until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.' The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.

"In the same way, if anyone were to say, 'I won't live the holy life under the Blessed One as long as he does not declare to me that 'The cosmos is eternal,'... or that 'After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist,' the man would die and those things would still remain undeclared by the Tathagata.

"For a disciple who has conviction in the Teacher's message & lives to penetrate it, what accords with the Dhamma is this:'The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple. He is the one who knows, not I." - MN. 70 Kitagiri Sutta